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Some highlights from the injunction: 1. "Waymo’s patent theories are too weak to support any provisional relief." 2. "By contrast, the trade secrets case pres
by pfarnsworth 9y ago
Some highlights from the injunction:
1. "Waymo’s patent theories are too weak to support any provisional relief."
2. "By contrast, the trade secrets case presented by Waymo does warrant provisional relief."
3. "Moreover, it has become clear that Waymo has both overreached in defining its trade secrets and made moving targets out of its asserted trade secrets to evade defensive arguments. Under these circumstances and on this record, no adverse inference that could be drawn in Waymo’s favor would justify overlooking these problems, pretending that all 121 of Waymo’s asserted trade secrets are valid, and enjoining defendants from using any of them so as to effectively halt Uber’s self-driving efforts until trial."
4. "Waymo is hereby granted further expedited discovery in aid of possible further provisional relief. Subject to the protective order, and upon reasonable notice, Waymo’s counsel and one expert may inspect any and all aspects of defendants’ ongoingwork involving LiDAR — including, without limitation,schematics, work orders, source code, notes, and emails — whether or not said work resulted in any prototype or device."
EDIT: one more I forgot, which is interesting:
5. This order, however, threatens no sanctions against
Levandowski. It simply directs Uber, a private employer, to do whatever it can to ensure that its employees return 14,000-plus pilfered files to their rightful owner. If Uber were to threaten Levandowski with termination for noncompliance,that threat would be backed up by only Uber’s power as a private employer, and Levandowski would remainfree to forfeit his private employment to preserve his Fifth Amendment privilege. No binding case law holdsthat the Fifth Amendment prohibits such actions by private employers. In short, in complying with this order,Uber has no excuse under the Fifth Amendment to pull any punches as to Levandowski.
Basically, if Levandowski refuses to turn over the documents, Uber is forced to fire him, which means the $250,000,000 they already gave him goes up in smoke.
- manyoso 9y agoI think Waymo laywers are very happy with the expedited discovery ruling and the order that Uber must make every effort to compel the return of the 14,000 files. This might not have been the bombshell ruling against Uber that they were hoping for, but it sets up that bombshell ruling if they can actually find the evidence with this new discovery.
- pfarnsworth 9y agoI disagree. It's only good if they find something, which to me is doubtful given the fact they didn't find something already, and given the fact that the judge didn't issue a single injunction against Uber for trade secrets. As far as I can tell from reading the injunction, there wasn't a single case of a trade secret from those documents making its way into Uber's technology. The fact that none of the technology made it into their Lidar designs makes it hard to believe that anything will be found. The idea that somehow discovery will determine there was something stolen seems pretty low at this point. I agree that the order to compel returning the documents is interesting, and to me potentially the most "damaging" if they are forced to fire Levandowski.
- manyoso 9y agoIt isn't just the order to return the documents. Uber is compelled by June 23rd for a complete and chronological record of everyone at Uber or on behalf of Uber who discussed LIDAR with Anthony and what they talked about. They have to question all of these people about knowledge about those 14,000 files and contents. Under oath. How many employees do you think that is? How many people? If Anthony discussed these 14,000 files with anyone - which is not a stretch to think that he has - then they have to admit it under oath or deny it under oath. You think others are going to want to perjure themselves for Uber?
- pfarnsworth 9y agoYou're presuming that they will find something. I'm presuming they won't. None of the technology made it into Uber's Lidar design, and already no evidence was found that a single document made its way into Uber's servers. Remember, they already went through a round of discovery and they found nothing. The idea that Levandowski would be telling people "Well, from Google's documents, I remember x y z" sounds awfully ridiculous.
- manyoso 9y agoI think the Judge is very clearly signaling that if any pilfered files were used by Uber that he is intent on getting to the bottom of it. And that all the claims of privilege that Uber has been claiming so far in the expedited discovery is about to go bye bye. The head of research on LIDAR at Uber had 14,000 files from Google that were pilfered before he left and he did this for purely for shits and giggles and not in any way to use these files for anything in his future job? The Judge says in the order it is preposterous to think this. Still, it is up to Google to prove misuse and he is intent on giving them the discovery they need to do so if they can.